


Solar Powered Soldiers

by tisfan



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (2008), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, M/M, Male Homosexuality, canon-typical lack of respect for physics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-01-26 23:53:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 14,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1707194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What ought to be just a relaxing day at the park ends up being a study in lies, deception, misunderstandings and jealousy...</p><p>Oh, and that's before lunch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In the Park

**Author's Note:**

> Not finished writing yet, I totally place blame on 27dragons for this because she got me into this fandom and now I can't leave.
> 
> Takes place after Winter Soldier.

“It is hot out here,” Tony complained. “And when it's hot, I get sweaty, and when I get sweaty, I get cranky, and you -”

“Don't even finish that sentence, Stark,” Bruce said.

“If you wouldn't wear those five-thousand dollar suits everywhere you go,” Natasha said, idly plucking the petals off a daisy, “then you wouldn't be hot.” 

Bucky didn't move, leaning as he was against Steve's thigh, his metal arm thrown over his forehead to shade his eyes. The sun felt good on his bare chest, pleasantly warm. He hadn't been so unarmored in a public place, he couldn't remember -

A twitching memory presented itself; skinny-dipping with Steve at Jamaica Bay when they were at least seventeen, because Bucky'd been driving his uncle's Studebaker. One of the tires had gone out and by the time they'd finished with that – Steve could barely turn the crank, although these days, Bucky would imagine he'd just lift the Studebaker and toss it on the side of the road – the sun had set and the changing rooms were locked tight. Bucky had still wanted a swim, although he would admit to himself now that he'd not expected Steve to take the dare. 

Tony lowered his sunglasses and peered at Nat with those snappy eyes, doing that thing with his eyebrows that always made Bruce smile, just a little bit. When Tony wasn't looking. “I'll have you know that I am always hot. Always. Completely. Ask anybody. You, yeah, Miss, could you -” he snapped his fingers at a girl jogging by in tight white shorts and a pink sports bra.

The jogger almost stopped, but one glance at the assorted Avengers laying around in the grassy section of the park made her hesitate. Or maybe it was just that Banner's eyes were growing disconcertingly green. That would be enough to freak anyone out.

“Tony, shut up.” Nat looped the flower's stem around the denuded bud and pulled, firing her grassy missile. Without even looking – in fact, Bucky had been certain that Clint was asleep until the instant she fired – he snatched the projectile out of the air, dropped it into the grass, and went right back to sleep.

Somewhere in the general banter and insults that passed for casual conversation, Bucky lost the memory, it shattered in the noise and clutter and Christ, couldn't these punks just shut up once in a while and let a man think?

Steve rested his hand against Bucky's shoulder. “You okay, Buck?”

“Fine, fine,” Bucky said. He let his eyes slip closed under the shade of his arm. Of course, if that was actually true, the entire cluster of Avengers wouldn't be gathered here in the park. If he was fine, maybe, once in a while, he could be let out of the Tower with just Steve. 

Steve leaned down, brushed a tangle of hair off Bucky's forehead and spoke even more quietly, “You're growling.”

“Sorry.” Still, it was out. And it was sunny, and God, the sun felt good. Maybe it was just being in the fridge for so long, or maybe it was – could he even laugh about this yet? - his old age catching up with him. But the sun felt nice. Soothing. The sun didn't care about what he was, about what he'd done. The sun shone down on everybody.

“You are going to get a terrible sunburn,” Natasha said. “Or blind someone with that lily-white skin of yours. Don't you ever get out of the lab, or out of the suit?”

Bucky opened his eyes again to watch – ok, he was appreciating it, there wasn't any harm to that, was there, Tony was a good-looking guy, after all – Stark strip out of his suit jacket and tie, discarded the starched and pressed blue silk shirt underneath. He was still wearing a sleeveless tank-top, the sort of thing that he was often wearing while tinkering in the lab, but in the lab, it was hard to think of Tony as sexy. He was more like some sort of element of black-smithing in the lab, not even human enough to lust over.

“My suit,” Tony snapped, shaking his coat out and hanging it over the park bench, “is air conditioned. And if I really need the vitamin D, I can always have DUM-E put in some sunlamps. But I think you'll find that all my nutritional needs are met -”

THUD! “On your left.”

Bucky leapt to his feet, reaching for a knife he didn't have, reaching for -

If Sam sighed, it was miniscule, almost unnoticeable. He handed Bucky a plastic bottle. “Here, man.”

Bucky turned the bottle in his hand, trying not to notice Steve hovering protectively, and trying even harder not to wonder exactly who he was protecting. Was he protecting Sam from Bucky, or Bucky from himself? No way in hell was Sam going to do damage to – stop it, stop it, stop it. He squeezed his eyes shut, he didn't dare ignore the rage, it got away from him when he did that, so he had to hold very still and close and careful, pack it back up.

“Soap bubbles?” Steve lifted the bottle gently from Bucky's hand before the metal fingers squeezed down and drenched them all in sticky suds. 

“It's a picnic, man,” Sam explained. He tossed a couple of bright, plastic hoops to Nat. “Go on, girl, let's see how many you can keep going.”

“Clint, remind me to kill him.”

“Sorry, Nat, I'm booked on reminding you to do things for the next two weeks. How about end of July? That sounds like a good day for random chaos.”

“Chaos is, by definition, random in nature,” Bruce added in. “However, I've never seen Miss Romanov do anything random. She is exceptionally methodical, as evidenced by -”

“If I twirl the damn hula hoops, will you stop talking the science?”

“No.”

“Stark, music, please.”  
Tony appeared offended. “What, do I look like, an iPod?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, well, in that case.” Tony fiddled with something in his pants pocket, which started blaring the crashing noise that everyone absolutely assured Bucky was music. Well, almost everyone. Steve wasn't too terribly impressed with modern bands, either. Except Led Zeplin. Even Bucky would admit that it mostly sounded like music.

Nastasha didn't flip one hoop around her hips and start gyrating, as Bucky half expected. She danced. She slithered and slid, working one hoop up her legs and then down, snagged another one with a quick flash of ankle, then a third. By the time the music looped back to the bridge, she had seven or eight hoops of varied colors going in three different directions. All at the same time.

“You're drawin' flies, Buck,” Steve said, putting warm fingers under Bucky's chin gently.


	2. Always Natasha

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She was probably lying. But there was nothing he could do about that.

Watching Bucky watch her was one of the hardest things that Steve had ever done. Because it always, always came back to Natasha.

_Sixteen weeks previous_

“Well, this is awkward,” Natasha said. She rolled out of the wreckage like so much grace on two legs, brushing dust off her hands. 

“You?” Steve raised a single eyebrow, staring at the rubble, smoke still coiling out of the collapsed fortress. “I'm impressed. Your destruction is usually a little less outwardly visible.”

“Wasn't me,” Clint said, coming up behind her. “Wasn't. I swear. Nobody saw nothing. You can't prove anything.”

“What are you doing here, Natasha?” It was all Steve could do not to shake an answer out of her. He and Sam had a solid lead – it had been solid – and now they were back at square one, because there was no way in hell that the Winter Soldier had stayed around, after this sort of devastation.

“We're cleaning up.” Natasha put a piece of gum in her mouth and chewed it slowly. When it was obvious that Steve was waiting for more elaboration, she sighed, just a little, and blew a bubble. After it popped, loud and annoying, she rolled her eyes. “This was a top secret S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, and the Director asked us to check it out. They hadn't reported in after the big dust up. It was like this when we got here.”

“Seriously,” Clint said. He snapped off his sunglasses and peered around the chilly, flat, Siberian landscape. “I don't break other people's toys. Mostly. Unless they deserve it. Or it's ugly.”

“It was a Hydra facility,” Natasha said. “Which should be obvious. This isn't us. We don't Kaboom.”

“Well, sometimes we Kaboom!” Clint objected. “But not this time.”

Natasha kept talking as if Clint hadn't said a word. “This was your friend, doing his own housecleaning. We couldn't get as much as the Director wanted, but we did find this.” She handed Steve a vial of pale blue liquid.

“Dr. Erskine's formula?” 

“Probably not exactly. But they did, eventually, manage to perfect it, as evidenced by the existence of your friend. There was some machinery there that Stark's going to want to investigate more thoroughly. It's possible that the Winter Soldier line needs to be updated, whereas you've been going good on a single dose.” Natasha shrugged. “Not my department. But we'll let Banner take a look-see.”

Steve bounced the vial in his palm, resisting the urge to shatter it. Not that Erskine's formula had done badly by him, no, never that, and Steve would never dishonor his friend and mentor by rejecting that gift. But Banner, Schmidt, Bucky, and Blonksy... there were too many disasters, too many lives ruined in the search to turn a man into the ultimate weapon.

“As if we needed more weapons,” Steve said. “Here, you'd better take this.”

“Don't worry, Cap,” Hawkeye said. “I won't stick the 'Drink me' label on it.”

Steve laughed. “Ha! I get that joke.” He clapped Barton on the shoulder. “Thanks.”

_Ten weeks ago_

The family looked up at him in surprise, one child of about seven with a fork full of rice halfway to his mouth. They were terrified. No one moved.

“No, sorry, no English, here,” the father said. He hooked his arm around the bowl of rice as if Steve might snatch it away at any moment, staring at the Stars-and-Stripes logo on Steve's chest. He hadn't quite gotten concerned enough to wear the armor, but most of his gear had some sort of identification marker on it. 

The mother added quite a long tirade in what was probably Russian, raising her wooden spoon and shielding her children from him. Great. Just great. He'd been told by an unreliable source that the man he sought had gone into that building a few hours ago and no one had seen him leave. Bucky, damn it, pal, where are you?

All he'd found here was a group of squatters who were, apparently, having the first decent meal they'd seen in weeks, judging from protruding cheekbones and chapped faces.

“Rogers!” Natasha snapped. She swung neatly off a rafter from the shattered second floor and dropped soundlessly to the floor. “Stop terrifying the locals.” She rattled off several sentences in Russian, grabbed Steve by one ear and Sam by the other and dragged them outside into the snow.

“Ow, ow, ow,” Sam complained. “What are you hurtin' on me, for? I just go where he goes.”

“Why are you here?”

“Coincidence,” Nat said. She glanced over her shoulder at the abandoned warehouse. “Those people are the son and grandchildren of a man who saved an American soldier, once. Their great-grandpapa found him at the bottom of a mountain, missing an arm, nearly frozen to death. He brought this into their house, warmed him up. Fed him. Iosef was not quite ten years old at the time. tells me that this one armed man lived with them for about three months, before NKVD came and took him away. A few months laster, the NKVD came back, took their home, burned their things, shot Iosef's father. Iosef got away by hiding in a trash bin.”

“I don't believe in coincidence, especially not where you're considered, Natasha,” Steve said. He glanced at the building. “So, what happened today?”

“Your friend came and brought them food, money, supplies. They're eating, and then I've got a car coming to take them to their new home.”

“And how did know all this?”

She stared at the tips of her snow boots. “He sent me a letter.” She tipped her mouth in that way of hers that meant she wasn't sorry and wasn't going to say it. “Through channels that I thought were long since closed. By the time I got it, there was no time left to contact you.”

“Did you see him, Bucky? Today?”

“No.”

She was probably lying. But there was nothing he could do about that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD
> 
> NKVD is the Russian Secret Police, disbanded in 1946 just after World War II.


	3. Sweet as a Stolen Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint didn't bother to open his eyes for the short journey from bed to toilet. Or, for that matter, using the toilet. His aim was just fine, thanks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains explicit sex, m/f

_Six weeks ago_

Clint didn't bother to open his eyes for the short journey from bed to toilet. Or, for that matter, using the toilet. His aim was just fine, thanks.

In further fact, he kept his eyes closed. Not quite sleep walking. Walk-sleeping.

Washed his hands, ran his damp hands through his hair; only wimps needed things like hand towels and daily showers. Through the bedroom, still naked, and into the kitchenette. By sense of smell only, he crossed to the counter.

He patted one hand over the counter. Coffee, coffee. He could smell it, so – ah, handle. There was a mug. He bypassed the mug and went straight for the pot (which would have exactly one mug missing from where Tasha took her share). 

One hand against the side of the pot, still nice and hot, but not blistering. Tash had been up for a bit then. He leaned back against the counter and poured blessed, blessed coffee directly into his mouth.

Just like he liked it.

Black as night and sweet as a stolen kiss. Tash knew him well; she'd take her cup out, fill it with soy cream and sugar and various flavorings. Gross. And then she'd pour about a half a cup of sugar into the pot.

“It's a wonder you can still aim your bow,” she said. 

He didn't jump in surprise, even though he hadn't even heard her breathing in the room with him. _Something_ might have stirred a little at the sound of her voice, though. _Down, Pete._

“Honey,” he drawled, “if I ain't got my coffee, I'd miss the barn.”

“Somehow, I doubt that.” Clint felt the air heat as she moved toward him. “The Director wants us to go home.”

“Captain Tightpants get his britches all in a bunch?” Clint asked. _Down. Pete. Really. Didn't you get enough last night?_

“The Director,” Tasha stressed, “thinks that we're getting in Cap's way, and we need Cap right now. He's a visible symbol, and everyone knows that he'll kicked Hydra's ass. Also, I need to appear before Congress. Again.”

“Gonna need to meet this new Director,” Clint said. “He keeps throwing you under the bus.”

Natasha shook her head, her hair brushing lightly against his bare chest. “One brass asshole is the same as the next. He'll get around to talking with everyone, eventually. Anyway, Congress isn't a bus; more like a big kid on a little skateboard.”

“They really wanna arrest you.” He'd done his share of prison breaks. He'd even pulled a few federal prison breaks. But planning was hard. And waiting was hard. And Natasha – although she'd never admit it in a million years – wasn't so good with being in prison. 

“They're not going to arrest us.”

“You keep tellin' yourself that, sweetheart,” Clint said.

Natasha put one arm around his neck and drew his head down for a quick kiss. “I'll keep telling _them_ that.”

Yeah, that was it. Sergeant Pete wasn't having any more of this At Ease nonsense.

Gently, she nudged his arm. “Put the coffee down, Clint.”

Ok, well, he had to think about that one for a minute. 

Sex? Or coffee? Oh, he had a hard life.

She touched him, light fingers running up his spine, just shy of tickling, which always made him arch up. Arch up. Ha! He made a pun.

Tash's breath rippled against his gut and he, very gently, and carefully, tenderly...

Sat the coffee pot down.

And followed her into the bedroom. And this was all still before he'd opened his eyes. It was gonna be a glorious day.

Tasha was a violent woman; she walked hand in hand with ass-kicking, death, deception. She could, and had, kick his ass. And Clint wasn't a push-over. In bed, however, she was soft, sensual. Small and needy. He lifted her up, layed her down on the tumbled sheets. Took refuge in the warm pillow of her breasts. She hadn't dressed, either. Good. He might have to open his eyes if he needed to fiddle with that damn bra clasp.

Slow. Tasha liked it slow. They didn't have anything else to do today. He stroked her all over, her skin warm and soft under his palms. He almost felt like an ogre, that he had no right to something so dainty and delicate. That he wasn't worthy of her. 

She had adorable toes. He slithered down the sheets to find them, licked each one. She squirmed under his tongue, twisting her ankle frantically. He let her foot go, kissed all the way up her leg until he found that sweet spot. Tasha's breath came in short, hard gasps and her hands twisted, hard, over his scalp, yanking at his short hair. 

“That's -” words disappeared when he tasted her. Damn, the only thing better was coffee. And it was a close second. He worked a finger between her squirming legs and his plundering mouth. Natasha squealed and he did that again. Whatever made her make that sound, because God! That was hot.

Clint had her begging in minutes, whimpering and writhing so hard that she nearly took his head off. He pinned her legs to the bed, spread out wide. He liked that. That he could do that to her. He tongued that little spot – his aim was always spot on! - until she stiffened, going abruptly still. Her body was hot, skin slick with sweat. Natasha – big, bad, Black Widow – cried out for him.

“Tasha!” Sgt. Pete was throbbing, insistently, again his lower belly. 

“Now, now, now.” She yanked bodily upward, bruising his arms, and he didn't care. He slid into her wet opening, soaked from his mouth, soaked from her wanting. God. Damn.

She kissed him, deep tongue, with her taste still on his mouth. If that wasn't hot, he didn't know what was. He devoured her. Her hand curled tight around the back of his neck, urging him in. When he was firmly seated, she tucked a leg around his hip and rolled them over.

Time to open his eyes. Because fucking damn. There was nothing more beautiful than Tasha, breasts thrust out, belly taunt, as she rode him like a fucking mechanical bull.

There she was. There. He grinned. Her hands were in her own hair. That beautiful red hair. He reached up, let one of those fiery locks twine around his finger. She moved, slow and steady. Her hips did this little dip and shift thing that was fine.

Clint sat up and she wrapped around him. He grabbed a handful of that brilliant hair, just at the nape of her neck and yanked her head back. Baring her throat to him. 

He licked at her neck, felt the pulse point against his lips.

She twitched. Gasped. All the muscles in her girlie bits contracted, squeezing at Sgt. Pete, full force. Clint thrust up into her, no time left for going slow. Damn. Damn. He bit her. Once. Twice. Again. Her fingers curled into passionate claws, ripped lines of fire and electricity across his back.

“Clint,” she whispered his name, soft and easy. He came to the sound of her calling his name. 

They rested that way, sweaty and sticky and saited. She rolled them down into the bed for a moment, snuggling. Sgt. Peter was done and he withdrew from her with a slight grimace. 

She kissed him one last time, then got up to use the bathroom.

He was just settling back into the blankets with the idea of getting some more sleep when he heard her sigh.

“God damnit, Barton,” she said. “I don't expect you to put the seat down, but could you at least put it UP before you piss?”

“Just like Budapest,” he groaned.


	4. Red in His Ledger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Sorry,” the Winter Soldier said, and it was still the Winter Soldier. There was recognition there, the Winter Soldier knew who Steve _was_ , but that was not the same thing as knowing who _Steve_ was. “I have a mission.” Steve couldn't hear his voice through the glass, but it was impossible not to be able to read those words in the shape of his mouth, in the look in his eyes.
> 
> “I thought I was your mission,” Steve said.

_5 weeks ago_

“Get the door, get the door!” Steve snapped.

Sam stared down at the keyboard under his hands and shouted something incoherent. “I don't do doors, Steve! I've barely figured out where to put the codes in that Natasha gave us!”

Steve smashed into the door, shield first. And bounced back. He didn't even crack the Vitrum Flexile; the same material that the Hulk's rage room was made from. How the hell had Hydra gotten a hold of that – oh, no, nevermind. Steve pounded futility at the Vitrum. His shield might break it, eventually, and in the meanwhile, there was no doubt that his pounding could be heard in the next room over.

The Winter Soldier stopped fleeing, looked back through the locked door.

“Bucky!” Steve screamed. 

The Winter Soldier, ragged and matted hair in his face, stared. He shook his head, slowly.

“Come on, pal,” Steve urged. “I know you're in there. Come on back, would ya?”

The Winter Soldier stepped over the bodies of the dead scientists – hopefully Hydra agents, but who the hell knew anymore. He didn't seem to notice them, moving like a graceful ghost between the bodies and desks.

Steve left his hand rest, spread-fingered against the glass. The Winter Soldier stopped, pressed his own hand to match Steve's.

“Sorry,” the Winter Soldier said, and it was still the Winter Soldier. There was recognition there, the Winter Soldier knew who Steve _was_ , but that was not the same thing as knowing who _Steve_ was. “I have a mission.” Steve couldn't hear his voice through the glass, but it was impossible not to be able to read those words in the shape of his mouth, in the look in his eyes.

“I thought I was your mission,” Steve said.

“Sorry.” 

The Winter Soldier left, nothing so frightened as retreating. He was just done here, there was nothing to wait for, nothing to see. No one to talk to.

Steve collapsed against the Vitrum, stifling a harsh sob.

A few minutes later, Sam got the doors open, but it was too late. The Winter Soldier was gone.

“We'll get him,” Sam promised. “That was the closest we've been in weeks.”

Steve stared down at the dead scientist, her hair filled with blood, her neck twisted backward. “Yeah,” he said. “And how many more will he kill, before we get him?”

“Not, maybe, that's such a bad thing? He's gone straight after Hydra agents. Hell, he's better than Natasha at this stuff.” Now there was an interesting thought. Bucky was a field agent. An asset, for Hydra. He did what they told him to, when they told him to do it. He wouldn't have been gathering his own info, would he?

“He hasn't killed anyone that don't deserve it since this whole thing started,” Sam said, patting Cap awkwardly on the shoulder.

That much was true. This particular facility had, apparently, housed both Hydra and loyal S.H.I.E.L.D agents. They'd found prisoners, hostages. And the loyal agents had only been disabled, or contained where possible. Still. Seventy-three dead in little more than ten weeks.

“There's no death without a cost, later, Sam.” Steve said. “He's not seeking justice. He's seeking revenge. And he might murder his way through the entire Hydra organization, but I'm not sure what will be left of Bucky, once that happens.”

###

“All right, Natasha,” Steve said. He thumped an Atlas down on the table next to her. To give her credit, she didn't jump, she didn't even look up at him. She finished her handful of popcorn and continued watching the newsgroup she was monitoring.

“What?”

“I quit. I give up. Tell me where he is.”

“How would I know where he is? Don't tell me you came home for this.”

“You said he got a letter to you. And you've been everywhere that he's been. I had a little talk with the Director.”

Natasha scanned the room quickly. “You talked to him? In person?”

“Yes.” And that had been painful, like tearing off stitches and letting the wound bleed free. Relief, joy, agony, betrayal. The Director had been a little less than forthcoming on the details, but the flat, traumatized look on his face when he did give the brief explanation had been enough for Steve to know that it hadn't been easy. Or pleasant. And not without possible, lasting, side-effects. Steve pushed it from his mind. He'd worry about that later. “And I'm not even going to talk about the fact that you knew about this.”

“I told you before, I only pretend to know everything. I didn't know until he called me up, personally, about two months ago. We're still cleaning up. It's level eight or higher. Imagine, for just a moment,” she said, her head tilted at a pugnacious angle, “what might happen to him if people know he came back from the dead. Who might want that information. What they might do to get it. It's need to know. I haven't even told Clint, and he might never forgive me for that, a fact that I can live with I have to, which might tell you just how important I think this is.”

“Enough distraction, Tasha. Where is Bucky?”

“I don't know. I've been providing him backup. Information when he needed it. Money.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because we need him to. He knows. He remembers. He's been places, and they didn't notice. They didn't worry about him, didn't view him as anything other than a weapon. Didn't realize the mind behind it that drove that weapon. He's just about the only damn chance we have to clean house.”

“Did you have a single care for what might happen to Bucky, or were you just pointing the Winter Soldier at our targets like everyone else has?” 

“Steve. He has red in his ledger. Just like I do. He came to me and asked for my help.”

“Blood doesn't wash out blood, Widow,” Steve said.

“Um, guys,” Sam stuck his head in the room. “Heads up. We've got... well, a sitch downstairs.”

“What's up, Sam?”

“Your buddy? He's downstairs in the lobby.”

Steve usually took the elevator. Or jogged down the stairs on days when he was feeling restless. He didn't usually intentionally take a ten story dive through the opening in the stairwell. Usually.

But he was really in a hurry.

S.H.I.E.L.D agents were everywhere, guns at the ready. The Winter Soldier was standing in the center of a circle of men who were probably entirely too close if the Winter Soldier decided to take them out. Like, a three mile radius too close. He didn't look upset, or even angry. Coolly, hands in his pockets, the Winter Soldier stood there, chewing his bottom lip. 

“Bucky?”

Steve moved toward him, slowly. Not wanting to spook him.

“Not quite yet,” the Winter Soldier said. Still calm. Eerily calm. Like a suicide bomber, and Steve wondered, reluctantly, what he had in his pocket. It was one thing to decide not to fight Bucky, and an entirely different thing to let the Winter Soldier hurt two dozen guards.

“Back off, guys,” Steve said. “I got this.”

The elevator dinged and Natasha walked off it. Smooth. Slow. Flowing like water.

The Winter Soldier watched as the guards parted to Natasha like the Red Sea. She went up to the Winter Soldier without hesitation, even though this man had shot her twice, had beat the crap out of her the not five months ago. She looked up at him in that way of hers that made a man feel short, even though he was at least ten inches taller.

“Mission's done,” the Winter Soldier said.

Natasha nodded slowly, held her hand out to him. 

Bucky collapsed to his knees on the floor in front of her, pressing her hands to his forehead. “I surrender.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vitrum Flexile: shatterproof, flexible glass, the recipe lost in antiquity. Because it's interesting.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_glass


	5. We're worth protecting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Put. The Director. Down.” Agent May was a blur of motion, snatching the ICER from inside Phil's jacket – which hung on the back what had once been his door, and that would show him to relax, even in his own damn office – and jammed the muzzle into Captain America's red white and blue abdomen. “This has knocked out bigger bad guys than you, Captain, and don't think I won't hesitate to shoot you full of tranquilizers and draw all over your forehead with a Sharpie.” She gave Phil a quick, hard smile, like a single sliver of sunlight through the clouds.

_three weeks ago_

“You got another complaint letter here from Stark Industries.” She handed Coulson the opened envelop, along with a dozen other forms, papers, and letters. At least in the computer age, half of the incoming reports for the Director were emails, otherwise his desk would be completely taken over by paper. Paperless office, pah! Like that was ever going to happen. 

Phil rubbed his eyes. “Is Hill still angry?” 

“I don't read your mail, sir.”

“Right, just like you didn't -”

Whatever May had done or hadn't done was left unsaid as Captain America broke down the door with his shield, spraying splinters everywhere. The letters fluttered off Phil's desk in a blizzard. “Well, that's one way to clean my desk, Captain. What can I do for you, today?”

“Are you out of your re-animated mind?” Steve was across the room in two strides, grabbing a handful of Coulson's jacket and lifting him bodily from the floor.

“Put. The Director. Down.” Agent May was a blur of motion, snatching the ICER from inside Phil's jacket – which hung on the back what had once been his door, and that would show him to relax, even in his own damn office – and jammed the muzzle into Captain America's red white and blue abdomen. “This has knocked out bigger bad guys than you, Captain, and don't think I won't hesitate to shoot you full of tranquilizers and draw all over your forehead with a Sharpie.” She gave Phil a quick, hard smile, like a single sliver of sunlight through the clouds.

“It's all right, May,” Coulson said. “The Captain and I are friends, which he'll remember in just a few moments, I'm sure.”

Steve had, at least, the grace to look a little embarrassed. He loosened his grip on the Director's shirt and stepped back. May stepped with him, not lowering her ICER. “You all right, Phil?”

Coulson straightened his shirt, checked his tie, and ran a hand over his hair. “I begin to question the sanity of accepting this promotion, but yes.” One of his buttons was missing. Well, that was just swell. "You know, we do offer emotional counseling, as part of our health plan for all Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D agents as necessary. There's even a doctor down there who could prescribe something, maybe, for your anger management issues. Of course, for you, it'd probably take the kind of thing we use on elephants.”

Cap inhaled, straightened, and crossed his arms over his chest. A telling statement; normally Cap stood at ease, or at attention when he was in the presence of someone he considered a superior officer. Phil wasn't certain if he meant it specifically at him – Director Coulson – or because he was just fed up with S.H.I.E.L.D. in general. 

“At ease, May.”

“Right.” May stepped back again and lowered the ICER, but she didn't put it away or take her finger away from the trigger. She'd gotten a little overly protective recently, and Phil wasn't quite able to resist the smirk that tugged at the corner of his mouth when he thought of the whys behind that particular instinct.

“So, what are you here to complain about? If you're objecting to my appointment as Director, you need to get in line behind Hill. She's got a much more compelling grievance to air.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Steve said, and Phil found himself looking down the barrel of a loaded sarcastic comment, “I don't think Sergeant Barnes should be re-tasked to S.H.I.E.L.D at this time. I believe that Barnes is suffering from memory displacement and emotional trauma. He will be better served with an extended reprieve from active duty, with the Avengers.”

“Look, Captain,” Phil said, “Sergeant James Barnes isn't all woobiefied and helpless. This is a man with specialized skills and frankly, at this point, we don't have a lot of choice.”

“You don't have the right to put him at risk right now -”

“Captain, the world is at more risk from the Winter Soldier than he is from the world!” Coulson snapped. “We are at war, soldier. And not some pretty foreign war for land or power. We are at war for the very heart and soul of S.H.I.E.L.D. We were founded on some basic, human ideals that said we were here for protection; the planet, the country, a group, or one man. On the core belief that _we're worth protecting_. Hydra made that protection a lie, and we haven't got any choice right now, if we're going to do our jobs, than to take what we've got and use it.”

“I won't let you sacrifice him. He's already lost so much,” Steve said.

“And I don't sacrifice our people, Captain. You should know that, beyond anybody. You think it'll do the Winter Soldier any damn bit of good to be locked in a cage, somewhere, to battle out his inner demons? You think he won't tear himself apart? He needs to be part of something bigger than himself, something that can help him regain his sense of self. He needs to make amends for what he's done. Not for us, not for the world, but for _himself_. I wouldn't be his friend, or yours, if I let him retire right now.”

Phil sat back down at his desk and picked one of the letters up off the floor. “That'll be all, soldier. Close the door on your way out.”

“Right. Yes, sir.” Cap stomped out of Phil's office and a few minutes later, he carefully put the soda machine in front of the door, blocking the entire frame and, effectively, locking Phil and May in the Director's office.

“You certainly have a way with people, sir,” May said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For merlin513, who introduced me to the phrase woobified...


	6. Being a Monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Not a problem,” Banner said, lightly. “You're almost, but not quite, the most destructive creature that's been loose in my laboratory. We tried, for a while, to reinforce everything, but I just broke it anyway. Or used it to break other things. Eventually the cost got prohibitive, even for Tony, so we gave it up as a bad job. Everything's cheap, useful, and easily replaceable.” 
> 
> “Do you ever get over it?” Bucky asked.
> 
> “Over what?”
> 
> “Being a monster. To watch him – _them_ – observing your every move, just waiting for things to go completely sideways?”

_Four days ago_

“If I die from blood loss,” Bucky said, rubbing at the crook of his elbow where Banner had just slapped another freaking bandaid. “I am blaming you.”

“Don't rub at it,” Banner sighed. “And you won't expire from blood loss. You have almost six liters of blood in your body at any given time, and I think Cap's lost at least four of it in a go, one time. Super soldier metabolism being what it is, it knocked him out for about three days and then he was pissing Sam off in the hospital. Don't even ask about how the IV line got grown into his arm and we had to cut it out because that was gross and believe me, I know gross. There's no way that metal arm of yours would stay on there if you didn't have the same sort of souped up healing factor as Cap.”

“Steve.” Because Captain America was a poster boy, originally someone to sell stocks and bonds – and boy, hadn't Steve been embarrassed when Bucky's seen one of those promo films? Captain America was an enemy. A mission. An obstacle, and one of the more frustrating ones of the Winter Soldier's career and it didn't matter that it was Steve in there, Steve who'd pulled him back and made him human once again, the Winter Soldier didn't like to lose and god damn it, he didn't need the temptation of looking up Captain Fucking America with the idea in his head of _finishing the mission._

“Him, too,” Banner said, unperturbed. He dropped the tube of blood into his centrifuge and turned it on. Bucky gritted his teeth against the mechanical whine and heart-beat whumping noise. The same sorts of sounds that his arm made when he pushed it to the limited. There was this one scientist, back at Hydra, who'd actually asked questions about Bucky's mental state, seemed to care about the noises he heard in his head, about the pull of muscle across his chest that ached. Worked with and tinkered with the arm, because – as he justified himself to an angry commanding officer for fraternizing – a broken tool didn't help anyone, and it was well worth their while to make the tool as efficient and functional as possible.

It hadn't saved the man, Bucky remembered. In further fact, the Winter Soldier himself had been given the kill order, and if it taught the scientist nothing at all, it had firmly impressed on the Winter Soldier that he not get too close to anyone, not even to care the tiniest bit. No one's life would be saved by ignoring them, but it wouldn't get anyone specifically murdered, either. He wished he could remember the man's name.

“What are you doing?” Bucky asked. “With all my blood?”

“Oh, are you still here?” Banner peered at something under a microscope. “I'm trying to figure out what was in that vial Romanov brought back. It's not quite the same thing as Dr. Erskine's formula that created the Captain, which we already knew, because that was lost when Hydra attacked him during Steve's transformation process. It's certainly not the same formula that I used – accidentally, of course – and that's a good thing. I don't think we need to fight any more Abominations, do you?”

“So, you're comparing it to my blood? Are you trying to re-create the super soldier program?”

“No, although you and Steve both are quite useful in a wartime environment, I think we've seen what this sort of experimental procedure can cost, not just in grant money, of course, but in the emotional cost to both you and Steve, and in the cost of human lives.”

Bucky winced. 

“No,” Banner continued, not even noticing Bucky's flinch. “What I'm trying to accomplish here is to see what effects they were trying to achieve with this particular formula. I've broken down the genetic code for Rogers – well, mostly – and...”

Bucky jumped, startled, as his metal hand – without his direct commands – crushed the side of the stainless steel hospital cart next to him. “Crap. Sorry, Doctor Banner,” he said.

“Not a problem,” Banner said, lightly. “You're almost, but not quite, the most destructive creature that's been loose in my laboratory. We tried, for a while, to reinforce everything, but I just broke it anyway. Or used it to break other things. Eventually the cost got prohibitive, even for Tony, so we gave it up as a bad job. Everything's cheap, useful, and easily replaceable.” 

“Do you ever get over it?” Bucky asked.

“Over what?”

“Being a monster. To watch him – _them_ – observing your every move, just waiting for things to go completely sideways?”

“No,” Banner said, matter-of-fact. “You cope with it. You clean up your messes. You pretend it doesn't bother you when your friends tread soft around you, praying that they won't accidentally piss you off by mentioning that really, purple isn't your color. You try not to notice that everything around you is so fucking breakable, including the people you love. You do get used to it. It hurts less, and you stop worrying quite so much that, during an intimate moment, you might get a little too excited. Because otherwise, what's the point? Not that people like you and I are capable of an easy death, but we're also capable of a lot more than a very hard life, and that's the goal, that's what we should reach for, and that's why you should make sure you tell the people that you love that you love them. It'll be easier for you, with their support.” 

Bucky nodded, thought. “Dr, Metzger.” He snapped his fingers.

“What? I think you're confused.”

Bucky shook his head to clear it. “People I cared about. There was a scientist, at Hydra, who treated me like a human being. I couldn't remember his name, earlier. Now I can.”

“Hmm. I saw that name before, in the files Romanov brought back. Might be worth checking into. If he cared about you, maybe there's something he kept private. Send her over to me, would you?”

As if Bucky was Banner's errand boy. He snorted. “Sure. I'll tell Nat you wanted to see her. Right after I tell her that I love her.” Bucky patted the metal table as he left, apologizing to it for the chunk he'd squeezed into scrap.

“Oh, hello, Captain Rogers,” Banner said, glancing up. “Thank you for your promptness. Roll up your sleeve and have a seat, would you? I want to check another sample against this -”

Bucky had seen a lot of pain, as the Winter Soldier. Been the _cause_ of untold agony. But he'd never quite seen anything like the look on Steve's face, the flicker of anguish that he covered with his simple soldier's attention face as he turned to Banner and unbuttoned his cuff. He didn't acknowledge Bucky was there at all.

Strange.


	7. His perfect, red mouth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky was blowing soap bubbles.
> 
> His perfect, red mouth, the lower lip so very, very tempting, was puckered up like he was getting ready to plant a kiss on someone.
> 
> He inhaled, his bare chest gleaming in the summer sunlight, the shoulders tipping toward sunburned red, and blew.
> 
> A double-dozen rainbow baubles floated out of the dripping wand in Bucky's hand, soap suds leaving sticky trails down his wrist and arm. God damn, that was sexy. Steve's mouth went dry and he found himself wishing that his track pants were just a little less tight.

_present_

Steve unclenched his fists.

He didn't blame Natasha. Or, he didn't _want_ to blame her. Truly, there was no blame there; if she'd done anything wrong at all, it was that she was Black Widow in the first place. She'd been Widow for so long, Steve wasn't certain she even knew how to stop being manipulative and a behind-the-curtains operative.

It wasn't her fault, Steve reminded himself. Not that _it_ was anything at all except his own complicated feelings.

He had Bucky back, salvaged and mostly functional. Most of the Avengers kept a casual eye on him – and not even as tight a watch as might have been expected. Certainly less than Bucky complained about. Attention-hog that he had been, something had changed, fundamentally, in Bucky's personality. He'd been edgy, almost nervous – if you could call someone who could casually rip the door off a van “nervous” - since he'd moved into the Avenger's Tower. But he was back, and if he wasn't quite the same man that he was before Hydra, not even the same man he'd been during the Great War, Steve wasn't any better.

Years of experience, of soldiering, decades on ice. These things changed a man, changed a soul. And Steve, at least, had the dubious honor of having made his own decisions. While he regretted the loss of life and the men who'd died at his hands – he never wanted to kill anyone, but he recognized the necessity – he'd made those decisions. Those deaths were on his hands and his heart. Bucky, however, God, how could you ever get past that -

Bucky was blowing soap bubbles.

His perfect, red mouth, the lower lip so very, very tempting, was puckered up like he was getting ready to plant a kiss on someone.

He inhaled, his bare chest gleaming in the summer sunlight, the shoulders tipping toward sunburned red, and blew.

A double-dozen rainbow baubles floated out of the dripping wand in Bucky's hand, soap suds leaving sticky trails down his wrist and arm. God _damn_ , that was sexy. Steve's mouth went dry and he found himself wishing that his track pants were just a little less tight.

Natasha was cavorting around him, shaking her brilliant red hair through a blizzard of bubbles. Sam joined in from the other side, surrounding her. She dodged in and out among the flurries, popping bubbles with quick, deft fingers, but she was no match for the pair of them. Within moments, she was covered in soap slime, laughing and trying to keep her face dry.

Steve shook his head. 

He wanted to be happy, he really did. Bucky was back, after all, and thriving as best – really, better! - than anyone had any right to expect. Didn't make it less painful to stand around and watch him fall in love with someone else.

Hadn't they always been there for each other? Best friends. Steve berated himself. He should be happy. Happy for his friend. He walked away, headed down the jogging trail. No one was going to notice that he was gone, and maybe a few minutes alone could help clear his head. He was just going to need to accept what was.

The trees were thick, green, growing close alongside the path that wound around the park. 

“Hey, Cap,” Clint called. He swung down from one of the higher trees, hand-over-hand like a monkey. On the last branh, he swung by his knees, looking at Steve with an upside down smirk. His shirt fell down, revealing a good stretch of flat, brown belly. How the hell had Clint gotten in front of him? “Something bothering you?”

“No.” Oh, what the hell? It's not like Clint blabbered. “Yes. Doesn't it bother you? I mean, Natasha's your best girl, ain't she?”

“What are you, stupid?” Clint flipped out of the tree and landed with a soft thud on the path next to Steve. “Natasha is her own person. That she shares herself with me, sometimes. That's a gift, man. She don't belong to me. She's not mine. But Nat can be generous.”

“You're not jealous?”

“Hell, no. She don't trust me any less, don't love me any less,” Clint said. He leered back over his shoulder, the remaining Avengers had joined in the bubble-wars which seemed to have become a full-on assault. “Honest. I'm glad she found someone else _to_ trust. She's happy. That's all I want for her. And, you know, to climb up on me first thing in the morning.”

Steve spluttered a bit at that image.

“Sorry, Cap.” Clint wasn't. Steve could tell, there was nothing sorry-like about him.

“How did you - “ Steve gestured aimlessly back at them. “How did you tell her, after you'd been friends for so long?”

“Think I asked who I needed to fuck around here for some coffee and she walked in the room.” Clint said. 

“I don't think that's exactly gonna work for me,” Steve said.

“Well, coffee's pretty damn sexy.” Clint punched Steve in the arm, which probably didn't have quite the same effect that Clint was hoping for. “You dragged that kid back from the edge of nothin'. Even if he don't want you, don't mean he don't love you. TALK to him. Which _I_ should not have to tell you.”

“Yeah, alright, yeah,” Steve said, scratching at his jaw. “Thanks.”

“It was my very great pleasure, Captain,” Clint said.


	8. The One Armed Man Did It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What's up there, Dr. Kimble?” Stark said, barely looking up from his cell.

_Bucky_

_Steve is gone._

A startling thought. Bucky bent to the water fountain again – his mouth was full of soap suds because he couldn't not laugh at how silly they were being and how damned good it felt to be silly. And of course, laughing just made Nat's aim a little better and a little more viscous, because she wasn't capable of not winning.

_... turn and kick, and her eyes glittered at him over the rim of her steely knife... like dancers, they moved together like dancers..._

_Red red red red. Red room, red room. Red._

Bucky spat soap water and dried his dripping mouth with the back of his hand. The sun was still high in the sky, no more than an hour had passed, it couldn't have just been an hour ago that he was laying comfortably against Steve's thigh. But where was Steve?

_… she glared at him over the hand pressed tight to her bleeding gut … betrayed, she was betrayed. How the hell …_

Bucky glanced at the Avengers. Clint and Nat were tossing a ball back and forth, and only the two of them could make that seem like some sort of unarmed cage-match. Natasha whirled effortlessly, like a dancer, beautiful, beautiful dancer, and Clint's aim was unerringly perfect. They smashed the ball back and forth like it meant death to either of them to let it touch the ground. 

Bruce was almost – but not quite – sleeping against Tony's arm. Tony had that same do-not-wake-sleeping-dragons protective expression on his face that he made during movie nights when Bruce would fall asleep. Bruce's obsession with the lab, with experimenting, with trying to understand everything. He didn't sleep regularly. Or well. Bucky'd found him up at all hours. Maybe Bucky didn't sleep so well, either. Different reasons. Sometimes they shared a late night snack. Or a quick wave.

Thor and Sam were bent over Sam's cell-phone, watching football and yelling at the tiny screen as it streamed video. Thor was making suggestions about how football could be improved with the introduction of monsters from one of the other realms. Sam was telling Thor to shut up and watch the game, damn it.

The Winter Soldier's hearing moved up into that upper register, like he had a goddamn megaphone in his head. Heartbeats, but none that ran on the same frequency as Steve's. Bucky knew that sound as well as he knew his own and it was nowhere in the park.

_… I had him on the ropes._

_… I know you did, pal_

_… fire again! Kill him!_

_… Bucky! Hang on! Grab my hand!_

The Winter Soldier crept over him, like a shroud, like a cloak of fog and fire. He strode back to the group of Avengers, kicked over one of the coolers that Nat had brought with them and withdrew two heavy pistols. Because Natasha never traveled without firearms, no matter how nice the day was, and neither did he, and they both fucking knew better.

“What's up there, Dr. Kimble?” Stark said, barely looking up from his cell.

“Steve's missing.” It was hard to talk. “He didn't go willingly. And we never heard it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I haven't been updating recently. I got sucked into this other thing, which is a lot lighter and fluffier than Solar Powered...
> 
> It's hard to switch moods sometimes, but bear with me, and in the meantime, check out Take Note if you want to see me be hilarious and pranky


	9. You think this is a negotiation?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What do you want?” Bruce held up a hand out of sight – he knew the others would be clustering around his lab soon enough and he didn't want Sterns to see them.
> 
> “Do you think this is a negotiation? That I'm going to trade him for money? For Stark technology, perhaps? You don't have anything that I want. You're adorable, just so cute I could put a bow on you and stick you in my pocket.” Sterns smirked.
> 
> “I'd like to see you try that,” Bruce cautioned. His heart was racing, pulse pounding in his temples.

_Bruce_

Bruce sat down, resting his head on his hands, fingers pressed tight to the orbital sockets to ease the growing pressure inside his skull. It had been seventy-three days since the last time he'd needed “the other guy.”

The problem with that, however, is that unless someone was actively bleeding on the floor, they tended to forget Bruce was in the room. Not entirely a bad thing. His control was good – better than he had any right to expect sometimes – but it wasn't perfect. If Tony, or the Assassin-twins - as people sometimes called Natasha and Barton - or Rogers got tempted to drag him into their little piddly arguments... Bruce wondered if this restless, lack of focus, propensity toward rude practical jokes was a casual or a corollary effect of being alternate enforcers and post-humans. 

When the action was on, no one was more razor focused than Tony, more brutally efficient than Natasha, or stupidly courageous than Barton and Rogers. But something had to be done with all the adrenalin and hyper situational awareness when they weren't on missions. And that's where all the trouble seemed to start. Trouble that ended up with mutant rabbits in the vent systems and peanut butter coming out of the shower heads.

Which meant Bruce, who spent most of his time in a state of vigilant calm, was overlooked. Which secondarily meant whenever there was a crisis that didn't necessitate a two-ton green rampage, he could slip away. He wasn't good at dealing with panic; not his own and certainly not the Winter Soldier's, who was currently losing his shit upstairs.

(Not to mention that it meant that he often had to do something drastic or stupid in order to get attention when it was required. No wonder it took Tony most of a year to realize there was an attraction between them -)

Bruce's computer started itself up with a hiss and whirr.

He raised his head, blinking.

“Ah, there you are, Dr. Banner,” the face that came onto the monitor was familiar, hauntingly so. Stretched and strange, but the maniac grin and glittering eyes were the same.

Bruce reached under his desk, pushed the alert button there. In the corner of his screen, JARVIS came online, recording, tracing.

“Dr. Sterns,” Bruce said. “I -”

Sterns stroked his grossly elongated forehead fondly, possessively. “Now, now, nobody calls me that anymore, Hulk, but then again, some of us can't really go back to blending into society, can we?”

“You know that I never meant for any of this to happen,” Bruce said. It wasn't his fault, he'd _told_ Samuel Sterns that Bruce's synthetic blood samples were dangerous. Deadly. In the mess that was Sterns's Harlem laboratory, Sterns had been contaminated. Guiltily, Bruce knew he'd never given a second thought to the excitable but dangerously careless scientist, hadn't wondered what happened to Sterns after Blonsky started his rampage through the city. 

“Aw, you're so cute,” Sterns said, patting the camera condescendingly. “Well, I meant for _this_ to happen.”

He stepped back, letting Bruce see the laboratory behind him. Rogers hung above the floor, lifeless as a corpse, suspended by cables. A silvery IV bag dropped poison into his arm. He was thinner, shorter. Sickly. But still recognizable as Steve. Pre-serum. Which meant he was probably suffering from asthma, tuberculosis, and a host of other unpleasant illnesses. Bruce winced. He could die.

“My neutralizer works, works. Even after your pretty soldier boy wrecked my lab and stole some of my serums. You always wanted a cure, Banner. Are you willing to do what it takes to get it now? You see what we'd have to do.” He gestured to the limp, unmoving form behind him. “Right now, the fix is temporary, but I'll perfect it.”

“What do you want?” Bruce held up a hand out of sight – he knew the others would be clustering around his lab soon enough and he didn't want Sterns to see them.

“Do you think this is a negotiation? That I'm going to trade him for money? For Stark technology, perhaps? You don't have anything that I want. You're adorable, just so cute I could put a bow on you and stick you in my pocket.” Sterns smirked.

“I'd like to see you try that,” Bruce cautioned. His heart was racing, pulse pounding in his temples.

Behind him, the Winter Soldier was struggling with Thor, trying to reach the computer as if Barnes could reach through the monitor and snatch Rogers away to safety. Thor was probably the only one strong enough to restrain the Winter Soldier, and Bruce was momentarily grateful for the interference.

“Oh, don't worry, Dr. Banner. You'll get your wish.”

The monitor went dark.

Barnes fell to the laboratory floor, hands thrust through his black hair, struggling not to howl with rage and grief.


	10. An Expert in Gamma Signatures

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In an undertone, Tony muttered. “JARVIS, seriously. We're what, still picking up the phone here?”
> 
> “Sorry, sir,” JARVIS replied. If it were possible for a computer to sound ashamed of itself, JARVIS was getting close. 
> 
> “Mr. Stark,” Leader said. “I had expected to see you sooner. Perhaps they're just not making geniuses like they used to.”
> 
> “Some of us still have to do it the old-fashioned way,” Tony quipped. “We can't all drink brains from a bottle. Slow down for the old folks, Beautiful Mind.”

_Tony_

The monitor to his left flickered. The erudite brainhulk madman leered at him through the screen, picking up what little of the labs were visible from that angle. All his work vanished from the 3D model. Tony allowed his lip to curl for just a second, then put on his most pleasant smile. “Ah, Pinky, so glad to see you again, how in the hell have you been?”

In an undertone, Tony muttered. “JARVIS, seriously. We're what, still picking up the phone here?”

“Sorry, sir,” JARVIS replied. If it were possible for a computer to sound ashamed of itself, JARVIS was getting close. 

“Mr. Stark,” Leader said. “I had expected to see you sooner. Perhaps they're just not making geniuses like they used to.”

“Some of us still have to do it the old-fashioned way,” Tony quipped. “We can't all drink brains from a bottle. Slow down for the old folks, Beautiful Mind.”

“Your perky soldier boy, he's not really all that perky anymore, Tony. I can call you Tony, right? Tuberculosis, that's a terrible, terrifying disease. You know, I don't know why they passed this guy over for the draft, he's really quite brave. And willing to die for his country. I think that's sweet. A little old-fashioned, maybe, but sweet. I gotta say, though, I don't think he's going to last much longer. He was coughing up blood this morning.”

“I'm curious, Sterns,” Tony said, still typing. There was nothing that he could do to prevent Sterns from tapping the computer systems, but that didn't mean he was going to let it interfere with his work. “Is there something you actually want out of all this? It seems you're going through a lot of trouble just to annoy me.”

“I enjoy annoying you,” Leader responded. He rubbed absently at over-sized temples. “It's worth it to me just to know I've caused you a little bit of pain, a little bit of trouble. Do let Agent Romanov know that her trace is getting quite close, I'm impressed. For someone who was prone to shooting me for no good reason and thus betraying a certain lack of enlightened self-interest, she's actually sort of clever. Three more minutes, and she's have had it. Also, thank her for me, if she hadn't put all of S.H.I.E.L.D's files on the internet, I'd be decidedly behind in my little project.”

The monitor went dark again.

“Hey, Stark.” Natasha slipped into the room, her face serious. “I got him.”

“That's good to hear,” Tony said. He glanced in her direction, reading the emotional weather on her face and in her body language. Not that Nat would ever, ever let him see anything that she didn't want him to see. Four years of knowing her, working together, and he'd never once seen her in an unguarded moment. Even the emotions she portrayed were just that, a portrayal. He read from her everything she wanted him to see and nothing that she didn't. It was interesting, but nonetheless, not pertinent. He took her at the face value she projected, since that was all he was going to get anyway. “I got the impression he thinks you didn't.”

“That's because very smart people aren't always very wise. Bruce helped me.”

Tony closed his eyes, tilting his head to the left just enough to rebalance his spine. He really needed to do something about the way he was sleeping at night, he was getting a crick in one side of his neck. Bruce had a tendency to be a huge bed hog, and Tony had found out once the hard way not to shove at his lover while sleeping. That being said, it might actually be time to get a larger bed, just so he had some prayer of not ending up at the chiropractor's office.

He gave her a brief flash of teeth. “How did he do that?”

“Pattern recognition. And we checked all the stops on the tracer for gamma signatures. Certainly easier than trying to scan the whole planet. He is the expert on gamma -”

“Yeah, I'd gotten that before, thank you,” Tony said. “So, tell me, Gabby.”

“Might be better to do that on route,” she said. “We can't risk the others knowing.”

“What are you getting at? You'll have to spell it out for me, slow and simple. Talking with that egomaniac seems to make me stupid just by proximity.”

“Don't expect me to buy the dummy routine, Stark,” she said, blowing her bangs out of her face with an exasperated puff of air.

“Was I selling that routine today? I didn't think so,” Tony said. He leaned back in his chair to wait for her response, then changed his mind. “No, never mind, I know what's on your mind. The super-soldier surpressor. There's no way we can bring in anyone who's enhanced. Probably not even Bruce. Which means we're heading in there with you, me, and Clint.”

“And me.” Sam Wilson said. “Steve is my friend.”

“God damn, Arch Angel,” Tony sighed. “Don't sneak up on people. I have a heart condition. What the hell's the matter with you people?”

“We should leave soon, if we're going,” Sam said. He was already wearing that damn backpack contraption. “Barnes isn't going to wait forever and I don't think we want the Winter Soldier breaking all your toys.”

“Suit up,” Natasha said. She smacked Tony on the shoulder. 

“Yes, I'd gotten that already,” Tony said. He rubbed at his shoulder absently, glaring at her. “Knock it off with the love taps, Bruce'll get jealous.”


	11. Rubber Ducky, Thou Art the One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh. My. God.” A woman's voice. Thor blinked water from his eyes and turned in her direction. The sly and deceitful Natasha closed her mouth with a snap, gazing at him with mixed awe and appreciation. 
> 
> Thor sighed. It was a mighty sigh that expanded his flesh in all directions. Held his breath a moment, then wiped soap suds out of his beard.
> 
> “Heimdall,” he said, “whatever wrongs I have done you, this joke has grown quite old and childish. I would appreciate it if you would not repeat it in the future.”

_Thor_

He was quite naked. Dripping wet. His hair was thick with soap suds. One moment he was on Asgard, bathing with his wife, and the next moment, he was on a paved street somewhere on Midgard, to judge by the circle of Avengers. 

“Oh. My. God.” A woman's voice. Thor blinked water from his eyes and turned in her direction. The sly and deceitful Natasha closed her mouth with a snap, gazing at him with mixed awe and appreciation. 

Thor sighed. It was a mighty sigh that expanded his flesh in all directions. Held his breath a moment, then wiped soap suds out of his beard.

“Heimdall,” he said, “whatever wrongs I have done you, this joke has grown quite old and childish. I would appreciate it if you would not repeat it in the future.”

He held out one hand, flexing his fingers open. “Hammer!”

Mjolnir flew to his grasp. His skin touched leather wrappings, felt the strength of his purpose flow through him like the thunderbolts for which he was revered. And entirely coincidentally, wrapped him in his armor. Which was probably a good thing, since while he had no particular concern for modesty, he was drawing quite a crowd.

“Friend Anthony,” Thor said, after a quick scan of those around him, Natasha, Samuel, Anthony, and Clint. In the absence of Steven Rodgers, Anthony Stark was most often the leader, perhaps because he was the one most often talking, or because he was the one with the highest honor against their combined enemies. Earth politics were quite murky. Avengers power struggles even more so. In either case, the other team members tended to look toward Steven or Anthony for leadership, and thus Thor followed their example. While on Midgard, do as the Midgardians did. 

“Hammer Time,” Anthony returned the greeting with his usual wit – which is to say, smart remarks and references that included nothing with which Thor was familiar. He had, over the years, learned to ignore it, rather than seeming puzzled all the time. Sometimes his wife would explain things to him later. It still wasn't funny, but if it amused Anthony to consider himself witty, who was Thor to say that he wasn't?

“As Heimdall removed me, quite unannounced, from my home via way of the bifrost, I can only assume that you have claimed, at last, the favor that Asgard owes to the Avengers, and therefore my presence is required. Might I ask what need you have of me at this exact moment?”

“Someone misses his rubber ducky,” Clint said in an undertone to Natasha.

“It's not how I want to be called to work,” Sam admitted. 

Natasha didn't say anything. She just stared, a little wistfully, at the cape and armor that now covered Thor's body. 

“Stars and Stripes has been kidnapped,” Anthony summed up. “Given the unexpected nature of the threat, we cannot bring in the bigger, bronkier team members to make itty bitty pebbles out of the enemy base. Counteragent to the soldier serum, on the first hand, and on the other hand, it's entirely possible that Beautiful Mind is trying to get us to bring other samples close enough for them to bleed on him.”

“Then what are we hesitating for? Let us go forth and bring Steven home?”

Natasha stepped closer. “I'm riding with Thor, today.”

Clint glanced up at the sky, cloudless. Blameless. Bifrostless. “Gee, thanks, Heimdall. Next time, want to conjure up a towel before you send him down here?”

###

Midgard was home to some of the finest flight conditions. Beautiful sky, lovely buildings, brilliantly green grass. The colors of home were reddish, gold, and brown. Truly, Asgard was blessed. But also sometimes, Thor missed the colors from Midgard, so bright and vibrant. Plus, dodging low-flying aeroplanes was exciting.

Natasha, barely noticeable on his left arm, whispered directions in his ear, consulting the primitive computer she carried in her hip pocket. Then she squealed, actually squealed, and threw her arms around his neck as he went through a crazy, zig-zagged pattern to avoid the sudden onslaught of – were they missiles, like those friend Anthony's company had produced in the past? 

White and gleaming and fast, so fast, they flew into the air, launched from pockets of dark, worm-like holes along the hill.

No. Not missiles.

Men.

Strange, white-clad men, their faces masks of silver and mirrors, their arms held tight to their sides, they flew without precision, as if launched by an unseen attacker. Thor evaded them easily.

Anthony. Did not. He took three of the white-armored soldiers, spun, lost altitude, spun again. He fired off several rounds, striking one of the creatures. He grappled another, twisted mid-air and knocked the third loose.

Although they were quite high up, and these white-armored foes did not appear to have any means of stopping themselves – they left giant impact craters, tearing up the local greenery – they immediately stood once they stuck the ground, running back toward whence they'd come.

“That's gotta be it,” Natasha said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate apologizing... but I know I've left people hanging around here and I can't promise it won't happen again. In my real life, I'm a novelist. I write primarily male/male romance and if you're interested, you can find me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/LynnTownsendwriter or my blog at http://paidbytheweird.blogspot.com/
> 
> In the last month or so, I've been working on revising a paranormal urban romance, due for publication March 18th... writing book three in my m/m new adult romance series, Classic, and collecting erotica stories for a science fiction anthology I'm editing for charity. In addition to that, I've recently signed a contract for a fantasy romance novel, being published in December. 
> 
> Which is all my way of saying "busy writer is busy" and unfortunately, those projects that pay my bills have to come first. 
> 
> In the meanwhile, check out my fellow writer 27dragons who posts way more frequently than I do, and who is pretty damn brilliant.


	12. Time for some Payback

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Humanoids were shuttled down the corridor like cattle, but Sam was able to avoid them easily enough; they didn't look around, or up. Widow probably would have been able to do it faster; she was as athletic and sneaky as a cat, but she also couldn't fly, and they wanted a fast extraction, when they found Steve.
> 
> God, Steve.
> 
> Not thinking about that, Sam told himself. Won't do him any good. Find him first. Then worry.

_Sam_

Bullet-proof. And bouncy. Yay. Sam emptied his guns, used Tony's reloading holsters, which were damned useful, he'd give Stark that, the man could build some awesomely convenient combat-capable hardware, and emptied them again.

Bullet-proof. But not unaffected. Shooting them didn't seem to hurt them, but it did knock them out of the way, and the Falcon was much faster than they were. 

Crask-BOOM. “Here comes the Thunder, baby,” Sam yelled as Thor did what Thor did best; wrecked havoc. Whole swatches of bad guys tumbled out of the sky; that would be more convenient if they stayed there.

Sam flipped over and landed, taking cover (it was not hiding, it was strategic camouflage). He watched, waited. Another of these humanoids was knocked to the ground, ran over to near Sam's lookout spot; he entered the bunker through a secret hatch, and didn't look around as Sam slipped in behind him.

“I'm in,” Sam reported over coms. “Keep 'em busy while I look around.”

“You might want to move faster,” Natasha suggested. “We're sending a whole batch of 'em your way.”

“You always send me the nicest presents,” Sam snarked, then clicked off, moving into the depths of the underground lair. God save them all from mad geniuses and their underground lairs. It was so cliché that it was painful.

The Humanoids were shuttled down the corridor like cattle, but Sam was able to avoid them easily enough; they didn't look around, or up. Widow probably would have been able to do it faster; she was as athletic and sneaky as a cat, but she also couldn't fly, and they wanted a fast extraction, when they found Steve.

God, Steve.

Not thinking about that, Sam told himself. Won't do him any good. Find him first. Then worry.

Sam came to a full and abrupt stop; the Humanoids were – quite literally – being flung out of a device that resembled nothing more than a giant potato gun. They climbed a ladder, slid in, legs first, and were Poofed out into the air, like animated cannonballs.

“Wow, that is just so unbelievably fucked up. I almost gotta tweet it,” he muttered. 

Sam slipped down a side corridor. He pulled Grumpy out of his pocket; eventually Coulson would want it back; the D.W.A.R.F. drones were difficult to maintain, and there were only seven of them in total. But right now, they were in sort of a hurry. He didn't ask questions as to how Natasha had managed to steal one. That was because he was a smart man.

“Go find us some gold,” he muttered, releasing the device. It hummed, hovered, then flew off down the hall, scanning and mapping as it went. The feedback data was sent to a hand-held monitor, somewhat larger than even a stupidly large phone. 

Humanoids was a good name for them, apparently. Grumpy's scanners didn't portray them as human. No heartbeat. No breathing. Ug. Whatever they were, Sam didn't want to run into them in these narrow confines. Moving right along.

Grumpy stopped; there was a door down at the end of the hall and as the drone didn't have hands... behind the door, Grumpy registered two heartbeats, and two heat signatures. Maybe, just maybe. 

Sam drew his sidearm again, crept down the hall. 

The door had a small window, laced with metal reinforcement, in the center. Sam dropped, kept out of line of sight.

Someone was laughing beyond that door, talking, but through the door, Sam couldn't understand any of it. He directed Grumpy until the floating bronze sphere pointed a camera directly into the window. The image was grainy, very 1990s. “Bad design, Fitz,” Sam muttered. He tapped in commands, focused.

There was Steve, all right, looking like something the cat dragged in. He was laying on a hospital bed, the head pushed up into a reclining position. Tubes ran through both arms, and his wrists were manacled to the bed frame. Steve was scrawny enough that the handcuffs were closed to their tightest setting, nearly oval. Bandages swathed the area around his wrists; struggling to get free, he'd hurt himself, Sam guessed.

A deformed, greenish man – was he really green? Sigh. Weird gamma mutants. - was peering at a series of computers off to one side. The man looked up, said something to Steve, and patted the dying super-soldier on the arm.

Steve responded, then coughed. And coughed. He bent double on the hospital bed, straining the cuffs to their maximum extension. Flecks of blood flew out of his mouth and dotted the sheets. The mutant spoke again, poured a glass of water. And sat it on the bedside table. Laughed.

Sam clenched his fist, felt his fingernails biting into his palm. 

Steve wouldn't ask for a drink, even if he was dying, Sam knew that. No way. The man probably knew it, too. Torturing Captain Fucking America. Sam inhaled, let it out slow. Time for some payback. 

Sam poked the tablet again; Grumpy inspected the door. It came clean for traps, electronics, explosives. It was locked, however, and steel reinforced. Shit, Sam sometimes wished he had some sort of super enhancements. Old fashioned way it was.

He shot the door handle off and kicked the door in.


	13. Yes, It's a Trap. No, It's not What You Think.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It wasn't about Sterns proving himself. Or even, really, testing those poor fucking synthetic humans that Sterns had developed. He called it a field test, sure, but it really wasn't one.
> 
> What it was... and this is why it became the worst thing that had ever happened to Steve, ever, was that it was about creating terror and despair.
> 
> Sterns wanted people to be afraid. To know there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that they could do against him.
> 
> And Steve was awfully damned afraid.
> 
> That Sterns was right.

_Steve_

Just for fun, Steve was mentally reviewing his list of how badly this hurt.

True, getting the super soldier serum had been painful. Every cell in his body exploded, expanded, reformed. Like being torn apart, lit on fire, stomped out, and crushed by a bulldozer all at the same time. Mercifully brief, but excruciating. All told, it was probably the seventh most painful moment of his life. Recognizing, of course, that if it had gone on any longer, or been unsuccessful, the pain would have probably driven him mad. Which was possibly what happened to the Red Skull and if Steve thought about that too much, sympathy for Johann Scmidt would polish off his sanity quite nicely, thank you. Moving along.

Watching Bucky fall from the train, gone in a moment of gravity and snow, reaching out to him, my God, reaching out. Different sort of pain, but no less horrible and intense. And long-reaching. Everywhere and everything Steve did after that point had been in response to that pain. On the other hand, he couldn't find it anymore. Everything that he'd been through in the last year, discovering Bucky was alive, discovering just how badly broken he was and put back together by careless children who played at science as if they were gods, and then, getting him back... ice after fire. He couldn't, maybe he just _wouldn't_ , revisit that particular pain well enough to get a clear look at it. Some things, like childbirth and signing your first bank loan, didn't bear dwelling on. He'd give that a solid four.

Because, quite honestly, as much as he would never, ever fucking admit it to anyone, going into the ice had hurt. Awfully. More because it took for-fucking-ever for his brain to stop processing the pain and just. Let. Him. Sleep. The ship crash was ugly. Drowning was certainly not fun. But the way he seemed to float, for days, as each fiber of his being was slowly frozen; he couldn't move, which perhaps was good, because if he'd been able to move, he probably wouldn't have been able to stop himself from struggling. Which might have killed him, and at the time he might have been grateful for that, but now... well, he still wasn't sure that death in the '40's wouldn't have been a blessing in disguise. Three, there.

Steve had always been a target for bullies, both because he had perfected, by the time he was eight, a signature look that seemed to draw people to _want_ to hit him, and by the time he was twelve, his weirdly suicidal and stupid brain had decided that the best way to handle the situation was to fucking goad people into taking a swing at him. Which had, in retrospect, made him tough as hell. He was fragile, and physically weak. But also resilient. He knew what pain was important and what wasn't. Mentally strong. Quick, too, because he'd never been beaten so badly that he couldn't recover. And, to some degree, oddly charismatic. In the most warped way imaginable. He made himself hateable. Pointed out people's flaws in such a way that they had no choice but to see them, no choice but to realize that he, Steve, had a fucking point, and everyone else in the room knew it, too. No wonder people liked to pound on him; it was never him, never about him, but the things in themselves that they hated, the things in themselves that they were ashamed of. (With that in mind, he might fucking well owe Tony an apology or five, because Tony was already aware of all his faults, and Steve really had no right to rub salt in those wounds.) 

Most of the time, he'd been able to walk away from his encounters with bullies, with men who didn't want to let women say no, to sneaks and thieves and disrespecters of every color, class, and creed. Steve was never particular about the sort of sorry assholes he liked to abuse; he hated everyone who bullied, no matter who, no matter why, no matter what their target.

Most of the time.

And that was the incident he was dwelling on at the moment; the one time when he hadn't walked away. When what Bucky had found was him, leg broken, rib crushed, coughing his life out onto some back-alley brick walkway. The worst thing about it wasn't the pain in his leg, which was awful, but truly no higher than a six. Five at the most. Or the way his lungs creaked and ached. The way each breath was a sheet of agony that he had to reach through, and still could not seem to just stop, stopping would have been easy and safe and he could have stopped, but one thought, one single thought kept him reaching.

They'd gotten away. The rapists and kidnappers had gotten away, and they had a little girl with them, maybe twelve, and she knew, she knew what was going to happen to her, and when he fell, beaten and bloody and unable to help her, she'd looked at him with total ice in her eyes and said, quite clearly, “I hate you.”

She hated him, hated Steve, more than she hated the men who were taking her from her home, the men who were going to do terrible things to her. Because for a brief moment, Steve had taught her to hope and that hope died a painful death.

So he couldn't die, because he had to keep living, had to keep breathing and reaching through the agony to stay alive because as long as she was suffering, Steve needed to live to give her something to hate.

Was that the worst?

Or was this? 

Could there be anything worse than not knowing; because he never did find the girl, never did know what happened to her, and while he'd scoured the papers trying to discover any leads, anything (he'd gone to the police, provided his own vivid sketches of the kidnappers and the girl, and he was pretty sure at least one of the cops believed him.) but there never was. Eventually, the girl's parents had a funeral for her, so they could move on with their lives. Put the burden down.

Steve had gone to the funeral, just to watch, from a distance. It was short, awkward, and an incongruously sunny day. He's never said anything to the girl's parents. He couldn't bear the idea that they might thank him for trying to help.

He raised his head; Sterns was talking again, like he always talked. That man never could shut up. If he was in the room with Steve, and he was _frequently_ in the room with Steve, he was talking. At first, Steve paid attention because talkie jackasses like Sterns (and Tony, if he wanted to be truly honest with himself) often said things, absent-mindedly, that whole battle plans could be drawn from. But Sterns isn't like that. He doesn't talk because he has anything interesting to say; he talks because he's a self-aggrandizing bastard with delusions of world domination that Steve is afraid might not be delusions.

Sterns had, over the last week, said enough for Steve to realize exactly what his plan was. And to have absolutely no way to stop him.

Because Sterns already had everything he needed.

This; this whole set up was just play. Running a test model.

Because he fucking _could_. He didn't care that he was hurting people; of course he didn't care about that, deranged lunatics rarely ever cared about the generic people. Sterns wasn't even particularly angry at Bruce, or Tony. Or even Natasha. This wasn't about revenge. Or anything stupid and petty and understandable.

It wasn't about Sterns proving himself. Or even, really, testing those poor fucking synthetic humans that Sterns had developed. He called it a field test, sure, but it really wasn't one.

What it was... and this is why it became the worst thing that had ever happened to Steve, ever, was that it was about creating terror and despair.

Sterns wanted people to be afraid. To know there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that they could do against him.

And Steve was awfully damned afraid.

That Sterns was right.

###

Sam probably should have known it was a trap because the handle did just get shot off and the door did just kick in. Because that's what traps were. They were the easy that suddenly became the hard, that turned into the oh-my-god-i'm-going-to-die-now sinking feeling.

Except that the trap wasn't what they thought, it was never what they thought, and Sam and Steve getting buried in a mountain of rubble, or shot, or whatever, would have been just fine.

Didn't matter. Steve watched, trying not to cough, as Sam came in, casually shot Sterns in the chest without asking questions, which was at least _something_ , maybe. Sterns fell down and didn't get up again. Sam shot him a few more times, just to be sure, which was decidedly an improvement in intelligence, but probably something awful and unfair in Sam's morality code that just broke and it just broke for Steve, which... yeah.

“Definitely the worst,” he managed to say as Sam came over. He didn't even need to resort to lock picks or cutting tools; Steve was only just strapped in; he wasn't strong enough to do anything against canvas and belt buckles, which was both humiliating and completely true.

“Nice to see you, too, sunshine,” Sam said. 

“Don't.” Steve reached a freed hand out and put it over Sam's. He couldn't prevent Sam from pulling out the IV line if Sam was really of a mind to do it, but maybe. “Leave it in.”

“Is it keeping you alive?” Sam didn't know much about medical stuff, basic first aid, maybe, with an added in dose of having to live around Bruce for a while.

“No. It's keeping you alive.”

“Right. Well, hold onto it, then, if it's important, because it's time to get out of here.” Sam touched his ear. “Thor, we could use that extraction, if you're not too busy.”

Steve doesn't need to hear it to know that Thor denied, thoroughly, any accusations of being _too busy_ to help a teammate.

Steve put his hand over Sam's. “Leave me.”

“The. Hell.”

“You have to.”

“No, I don't have to, what the hell are you talkin' about, man?”

“It's a plague. The trap. I'm the trap. Once that drug wears off, I'll be contagious. I'll die. And so will everyone else that I've touched, been in the same room with. If I take a piss, everything the drain water touches. You have to leave me here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know, I'm awful.
> 
> \-- Allow me to pull a Princess Bride here. (He does not get eaten by the eels at this time... because you looked worried.)
> 
> I absolutely promise I will finish this story in the next week. Or two.


	14. Hell of an Extraction Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Punk,” Bucky growled. He noticed that Steve was cradled in Sam's arms, protesting and pushing at the Falcon with feeble attempts. And that hurt, a little bit, to see someone else step into that protective role, that care-giver. Especially since Bucky was quite certain that Sam's feelings for Captain America went a little beyond what one might expect from comrades, and into hero worship that might have edged over into love.
> 
> How Steve felt, Bucky wasn't sure, didn't want to know, because he wasn't sure if he was ready for that dream to die, like all the others had died.
> 
> He shook his head, watched the dust spray out of his hair. “Someone might think you wanted to be a fucking martyr to the cause, die for God and country.”
> 
> “No,” Steve said, cringing back into Sam's embrace, one thin, skinny arm thrust out on a warding gesture, “no. No, please, Bucky, no. You have to go, I can't... I can't...” He coughed again, whatever he couldn't do lost in the wracking, painful breaths.
> 
> “They have a word for you in this century. Can't believe it took 'em seventy years to come up with it. That word is 'drama queen.'”

_Bucky_

The roof exploded, and that couldn't have been good for anybody, but Bucky trusted in God, and so by that stretch of logic, he should also be able to trust in _Thor_.

He slid down the rope into the hole in the roof, down past the dust – hoping to God and Thor that Steve wasn't going to be damaged worse by all the debris floating around and his lungs were still holding out long enough to stand a little dirt – and touched down finally on the concrete of Stern's lab. 

“... you have to leave me here,” Steve was saying. “Please go.”

Bucky's heart nearly stopped. He'd finally figured out that he would never, ever die, because Steve had made his heart immune to all damage out of sheer, bloody-minded repetitiveness by the time they were both nineteen. 

“Punk,” Bucky growled. He noticed that Steve was cradled in Sam's arms, protesting and pushing at the Falcon with feeble attempts. And that hurt, a little bit, to see someone else step into that protective role, that care-giver. Especially since Bucky was quite certain that Sam's feelings for Captain America went a little beyond what one might expect from comrades, and into hero worship that might have edged over into love.

How Steve felt, Bucky wasn't sure, didn't want to know, because he wasn't sure if he was ready for that dream to die, like all the others had died.

He shook his head, watched the dust spray out of his hair. “Someone might think you wanted to be a fucking martyr to the cause, die for God and country.”

“No,” Steve said, cringing back into Sam's embrace, one thin, skinny arm thrust out on a warding gesture, “no. No, please, Bucky, no. You have to go, I can't... I can't...” He coughed again, whatever he couldn't do lost in the wracking, painful breaths.

“They have a word for you in this century. Can't believe it took 'em seventy years to come up with it. That word is 'drama queen.'”

Bucky pulled the syringe out of his hip pocket, used his teeth to remove the plastic cap, and jammed the needle into Steve's arm.

Steve recovered from his coughing fit. “What is that?”

“Cure, dumbass,” Bucky said. “What'd you think it was?”

“Look, much as I hate to mention it, he ain't exactly not-heavy, even this way, so can we get out of here, now, please?”

“What about Sterns?” Bucky looked around.

“I shot him already,” Sam answered. But of course there was no body, there never was a body, and Bucky really hated the fact that dead people did not stay fucking dead the way they were supposed to, but enough about that.

“Let's get you gone, punk,” Bucky said, patting Steve on the arm. “And stop. Fucking. Worrying. It'll be fine.”

Bucky tugged on the rope, let Thor pull him back out, while Sam flew up, like some sort of mechanical guardian angel with the only thing Bucky cared about at all in his arms.

###

“You stupid little shit,” Bucky said, leaning against Steve's bed in medical. “Are you really that suicidal?”

Steve scrubbed at his face wearily. The cough had quieted a bit, which was a relief, because Bucky was flat out terrified at the way his breathing had sounded when they got Steve into a hospital bed.

“Nothing for this but to let it wear off,” Bruce had said about the IV bag. So they'd left it there, and Bruce had turned the drip all the way down to slow the affects. “The rest of it will just take time.”

Time, at least, that they had. 

“Worse, I think you're tryin' to kill me, in the process,” Bucky continued on his tirade, because frankly, he was so tired and worried and tired of being worried that he couldn't do anything aside from blow up at the one person who probably didn't deserve it.

Because, just reasons, okay? 

“Well, how was I supposed to know you guys already knew what was going on?” Steve peeked over the edges of his fingers. “I've been stuck in a room with Sterns for the last who-knows-how-long -”

Bucky knew exactly how long, down to the fucking second, but he wasn't going to talk about that right now.

“- and he was convinced that you all had no idea what he was up to, that he was looking for another sample from your blood, or maybe Bruce's and then everyone just obligingly walked into his trap like a bunch of dolts.”

“We have Bruce. Tony. And Natasha. On our team. Exactly who's the dolt around here?”

“Um, me?” Steve tried for the adorable, I'm too cute to kill look, which didn't work very well, except that of course Bucky wasn't going to kill _Steve_ , he was just going to _kill_ Steve.

“Exactly right, you.” Bucky sat on the edge of Steve's bed, patting his leg under the blankets. “But Sterns had eyes and ears here in the tower, and we had to make him think that everything was going just the way he planned it. Couldn't risk him knifing you or something while you still have this... stupid anti-serum in your system.”

“That's really going to wear off?” Steve asked.

“You care?” It wasn't like Steve to be hopeful, he didn't hate his dimestore muscles or anything, but he'd always fought the good fight, artificial build-up or not. And nothing in his personality was going to change if he was skinny or stupendous.

Steve licked his lips, slowly, deliberately. “Yeah, I care, Buck. I don't want to go back to being useless, and while I am not the martyr you accused me of bein' – don't get me wrong, I don't want to die, but if I have to, and eventually, I will have to – I don't mind it being over something worthy. And I don't... didn't... I didn't want to die with some stuff left unsaid, and it's been unsaid for too long.”

Bucky closed his eyes briefly. “You're gonna be fine, Stevie,” he said. “The anti-serum is going to wear off, that's why Sterns had you on a drip, because he had to counteract all the heal-factor and supering up that your serum does for you. It can only be held back for a bit, and in a week, tops, you'll be right as rain, so don't... just don't think you have to -”

Steve leaned forward and shut Bucky's mouth in the best – and worst – possible way. Steve kissed him. Light, easy, no tongue, no force, no persuasion. Just a hell of a lot of sincerity and passion.

“Shush.” Steve said. 

“I don't -” Bucky started, stopped, licked his lip where he could feel the press of Steve's mouth on his...

“Doesn't matter,” Steve said. “I know you love Natasha, and I'm happy for you. But I didn't want to die without letting you know that I love you, that I've always loved you. I'll never say another word about it if you -”

“Shut. Up.”

And Bucky kissed him back. Which was everything that Steve's kiss hadn't been; rough and aggressive, demanding, possessive. He forced his tongue inside Steve's mouth, ravaged every bit of sweetness out of Steve with a passion and need that Bucky'd never experienced before. 

“What the hell do you think I love _Natasha_ for? Are you blind?”

Steve panted for breath, falling back against the pillows weakly. “Must be.” He opened one eye and looked at Bucky. “So, why didn't you tell me? Road goes two ways, Buck.”

Bucky stared down at the top of his boots, muddy and battlestained. “Thought you were into Sam.”

Steve laughed, weakly. “God... don't make me laugh, hurts...”


End file.
